Connolly’s Strategy for the Easter Rising:Should the Irish Working Class Have Stood Alone? By Peter UrbanNationalism without Socialism - without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin - is only national recreancy. It would be tantamount to a public declaration that our oppressors had so far succeeded in inoculating us with their perverted conceptions of justice and morality that we had finally decided to accept those conceptions as our own, and no longer needed an alien army to force them upon us. As a Socialist I am prepared to do all one man can do to achieve for our motherland her rightful heritage - independence; but if you ask me to abate one jot or title of the claims of social justice, in order to conciliate the privileged classes, then I must decline. Such action would be neither honourable nor feasible. Let us never forget that he never reaches Heaven who marches thither in the company of the Devil. - James Connolly in Socialism and Nationalism Most who study the actions and writings of James Connolly have become accustomed to viewing his participation in the Easter Rising of 1916 as testament to, and manifestation of, his final, mature analysis.We have come to understand the historical reality of Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army marching into the streets of Dublin on Easter Monday morning as providing a dramatic illustration of the essence of the merging of the class and national struggles found in Connolly’s writings, that we have come to call “republican socialism.”Accordingly, it may come as a surprise to the reader to learn that the purpose of this article is to advance the position that the joining of the Irish Citizen Army’s forces with those of the Irish Volunteers in 1916 was, in fact, an aberration, which was inconsistent with Connolly’s analysis; one forced upon him by circumstances, rather than adopted because it reflected his perspective on how the working class should pursue their own liberation.The republican socialist analysis developed by James Connolly, far from supporting an alliance with bourgeois nationalism, consistently advocated the independence of the working class within the struggle for national liberation, even in the handful of months between Connolly having agreed to an alliance with the Irish Volunteers and the onset of the Easter Rising—to the extent that while leading his ICA volunteers into battle in 1916, Connolly took this final opportunity to tell them: “to keep their rifles because some of those (the Nationalists) with whom they were joining to fight, would not be willing to go as far as the workers must go and they might need their rifles again.”The purpose of this article is, therefore, to commit heresy. The purpose of this article is to suggest that rather than the joining of the forces of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers being a manifestation of the theoretical position championed by James Connolly, it was an aberration.Moreover, that it was an aberration, which has had seriously negative repercussions for the development of the revolutionary forces of the working class in Ireland. It is this author’s belief that it was only because Connolly did not survive the outcome of the Easter Rising that he was unable to provide us with a critique, which would have restored the thrust and trajectory of his writings on the subject in the years leading up to the 1916 Easter Rising.I shall attempt to make a case for the view that Connolly firmly believed in the need for the independence of the working class within the national liberation struggle and did not share the vision of an Irish Republic advanced by P.H, Pearse and others from the IRB and Irish Volunteers, but championed an immediate struggle for socialism by Irish workers.As early as July 22, 1899, Connolly wrote in the pages of the Irish Worker on the contrast between the republican socialist and purely republican tendencies within the Irish national liberation struggle, in an essay entitled Physical Force in Irish Politics. It is not the first of Connolly’s writings on the subject by any means, but it is a very revealing essay all the same. Connolly wrote:It may be interesting, then, to place before our readers the Socialist Republican conception of the functions and uses of physical force in a popular movement. We neither exalt it into a principle nor repudiate it as something not to be thought of. Our position towards it is that the use or non-use of force for the realisation of the ideas of progress always has been and always will be determined by the attitude, not of the party of progress, but of the governing class opposed to that party. If the time should arrive when the party of progress finds its way to freedom barred by the stubborn greed of a possessing class entrenched behind the barriers of law and order; if the party of progress has indoctrinated the people at large with the new revolutionary conception of society and is therefore representative of the will of a majority of the nation, if it has exhausted all the peaceful means at its disposal for the purpose of demon-strating to the people and their enemies that the new revolutionary ideas do possess the suffrage of the majority; then, but not till then, the party which represents the revolutionary idea is justified in taking steps to assume the powers of government, and in using the weapons of force to dislodge the usurping class or government in possession, and treating its members and supporters as usurpers and rebels against the constituted authorities always have been created. In other words, Socialists believe that the question of force is of very minor importance; the really important question is of the principles upon which is based the movement that may or may not need the use of force to realise its object. Here, then, is the immense difference between the Socialist Republicans and our friends the physical force men. The latter, by stifling all discussions of principles, earn the passive and fleeting commendation of the unthinking multi-tude; the former, by insisting upon a thorough understanding of their basic principles, do not so readily attract the multitude, but do attract and hold the more thoughtful amongst them. It is the difference betwixt a mob in revolt and an army in preparation. The mob, who cheered a speaker referring to the hopes of a physical force movement would, in the very hour of apparent success, be utterly disorganised and divided by the passage through the British Legislature of any trumpery Home Rule Bill. The army of class-of-conscious workers organising under the banner of the Socialist Republican Party, strong in their know.-ledge of economic truth and firmly grounded in their revolutionary principles, would remain entirely unaffected by any such manoeuvre and, knowing it would not change their position as a subject class, would still press forward, resolute and undivided, with their faces set towards their only hope of emancipation —the complete control by the working-class democracy of all the powers of National Government. Ten years later, we can draw upon the essay Sinn Fein, Socialism and the Nation, published in the Irish Nation on January 23, 1909, to see the development of Connolly’s perspective on this issue. Connolly wrote:In a recent issue of The Peasant, a correspondent, "Cairbre," in the midst of a very fair and reasonable article on "Sinn Fein and Socialism," says: "A rapprochement between Sinn Feinism and Socialism is highly desirable."To this I desire to say a fervent "Amen," and to follow up in my prayer with a suggestion which may help in realising such a desirable consummation. Always presupposing that the rapprochement is desired between Sinn Feiners who sympathise with Socialism and not merely with those who see no further than "the Consti-tution of '82," on the one hand, and Socialists who realise that a Socialist movement must rest upon and draw its inspiration from the historical and actual conditions of the country in which it functions and not merely lose themselves in an abstract "internation-alism" (which has no relation to the real internationalism of the Socialist movement), on the other. But, first, it would be as well to state some of the difficulties in the way in order that we may shape our course in order to avoid them.It must demonstrate to the people of Ireland that our nationalism is not merely a morbid idealising of the past, but is also capable of formulating a distinct and definite answer to the problems of the present and a political and economic creed capable of adjustment to the wants of the future. This concrete political and social ideal will best be supplied, I believe, by the frank acceptance on the part of all earnest nationalists of the Republic as their goal. Not a Republic, as in France, where a capitalist monarchy with an elective head parodies the constitutional abortions of England, and in open alliance with the Muscovite despotism brazenly flaunts its apostasy to the traditions of the Revolution. Not a Republic as in the United States, where the power of the purse has established a new tyranny under the forms of freedom; where, one hundred years after the feet of the last British red-coat polluted the streets of Boston, British landlords and financiers impose upon American citizens a servitude compared with which the tax of pre-Revolution days was a mere trifle. No! the Republic I would wish our fellow-countrymen to set before them as their ideal should be of such a character that the mere mention of its name would at all times serve as a beacon-light to the oppressed of every land, at all times holding forth promise of freedom and plenteousness as the reward of their efforts on its behalf. To the tenant farmer, ground between landlordism on the one hand and American competition on the other, as between the upper and the nether mill-stone; to the wage-workers in the towns, suffering from the exactions of the slave-driving capitalist to the agricultural labourer, toiling away his life for a wage barely sufficient to keep body and soul together; in fact to every one of the toiling millions upon whose misery the outwardly-splendid fabric of our modern civilisation is reared, the Irish Republic might be made a word toconjure with - a rallying point for the disaffected, a haven for the oppressed, a point of departure for the Socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom. If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over DublinCastle, unless you set about the organisation of the SocialistRepublic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed. Even after the outbreak of the World War, Connolly wrote in The Hope of Ireland, in The Irish Worker:Alone in Ireland the working class has no ties that bind it to the service of the Empire. Hunger and the fear of hunger have driven thousands of our class into the British army; but for whatever pay or pension such have drawn there from they have given service, and owe neither gratitude nor allegiance. For those still held to that accursed bargain as reservists, etc., we have no feelings except compassion; the British Shylock will hold them to the bond. Other classes serve England for the sake of dividends, profits, official positions and sinecures – a thousand strings drawing them to England for the one patriotic tie that binds them to Ireland. The Irish working class as a class can only hope to rise with Ireland.Equally true is it that Ireland cannot rise to Freedom except upon the shoulders of a working class knowing its rights and daring to take them.That class of that character we are creating in Ireland. Wherever then in Ireland flies the banner of the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union there flies also to the heavens the flag of the Irish working class, alert, disciplined, intelligent, determined to be free.When the First World War did erupt, Connolly threw himself into opposition against it. Over and over again, with obvious signs of growing despair and impatience, Connolly called for an end to workers spilling the blood of their fellow workers for the benefit of their respective ruling classes. Repeatedly he condemned the failure of the Second International to intervene to stop this fraternal carnage. And, with growing frequency, we find Connolly suggesting that if only an example could be set for the working class soldiers slaughtering one-another on the battlefields of the continent, perhaps they could be induced to turn their guns around and, to paraphrase the Zimmerwald Left, “turn the imperialist war into a class war.”We find this theme in Connolly’s article, Our Duty in this Crisis:Should the working class of Europe, rather than slaughter each other for the benefit of kings and financiers, proceed tomorrow to erect barricades all over Europe, to break up bridges and destroy transport service that war might be abolished, we should be perfectly justified in following such a glorious example and contributing our aid to the final dethronement of the vulture classes that rule and rob the world.But pending either of these consummations it is our manifest duty to take all possible action to save the poor from the horrors this war has in store.Again, in Revolutionary Unionism and War, he read Connolly’s words that: “the signal of war ought also to have been the signal for rebellion…”We encounter it again in his article, A Continental Revolution:Every shell which explodes in the midst of a German battalion will slaughter some Socialists; every Austrian cavalry charge will leave gashed and hacked bodies of Serbian or Russian Socialists squirming and twisting in agony upon the ground; every Russian, Austrian, or German ship sent to the bottom or blown sky-high will men sorrow and mourning in the homes of some Socialist comrades of ours. If these men must die, would it not be better to die for their class. . .Towards the close of 1914, Connolly wrote in Telling the Truth: A Challenge to Mr. Birrell:We on our part have a duty to perform. A duty to our class and our country. That duty compels us to do what in us lies to avert the slaughter of any more of our people in the shambles of the Continent.In fact, a review of Connolly’s articles in the years between the outbreak of World War I and the Easter Rising will lead to the conclusion that Connolly’s motivation in leading the ICA into battle in 1916 was as much an attempt to set an example for the European proletariat, which might turn them away from killing each other and set them on the path to class war, as it was to bring about the establishment of an Irish Republic, be it a capitalist republic or a workers’ republic.Moreover, in 1915—late in the year, on October 30th— we find Connolly writing in the Irish Worker on the ICA:An armed organisation of the Irish working class is a phenomenon in Ireland. Hitherto, the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army officered, trained, and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve their own future.As Connolly continued to return to the theme of the horror of the first world war and the need to turn the guns in the hands of workers against their own ruling classes over and over throughout 1915.It was clearly not lost upon the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood within the Irish Volunteers’ leadership that Connolly was preparing to lead the ICA into insurrection if the war continued to drag on.The impact of the Irish Citizen Army seizing for itself the mantle of the Irish national liberation struggle through such an action held the potential for transforming the perspective of many Irish nationalists, especially those within the working class of Ireland. It appears not unlikely then that the “meeting” between Connolly and the military council of the IRB at the outset of 1916 was designed to ensure that the ICA not act alone, thereby replacing the IRB as the leading force within the national liberation struggle in the present period.The nature and content of this meeting is, unfortunately, obscured by the conspiratorial secrecy of the IRB (denounced by Connolly) and the need to maintain an impression of cooperation that would be necessary to cement the ICA and Irish Volunteers into a united fighting force.Connolly’s biographer Desmond Greaves hints at the meeting arising not from a prior agreement between Connolly and the IRB men, but rather from Connolly being kidnapped by the IRB for the purpose of secret talks.We can only guess at what was said during this meeting. The possibilities range from the IRB leaders starting off intent to discourage Connolly from leading the ICA into an insurrection alone and ultimately agreeing to a joint action when they found themselves unable to bend Connolly to their will, to Connolly proposing a joint action and the talks boiling down to working out the dynamics of the alliance and the details of the insurrection. What we do know, however, is that the duration of the talks was days, not hours, and that Connolly’s wife appeared to be unaware of what had become of him; which tend to support the view that the agreements hammered out were not the result of completely cordial negotiations. Many words have been written to demonstrate a climate of mutual respect between Connolly and the IRB leaders, but such writings tend to overlook or de-emphasize the clear differences between the parties. When P.H. Pearse waxed romantically on how the spilled blood of the First World War would water the garden of European manhood (to paraphrase), Connolly’s response was brief and to the point, and left no room for misinterpretation; he called Pearse a “blithering idiot!”While republican historians would have us believe that Pearse was won over to support for Connolly’s social programme on the basis of an almost meaningless line in the Easter Proclamation about the wealth of Ireland belonging to all its people, which, despite the cheerleading, provides nothing resembling the basis for the construction of socialism in Ireland; and James Connolly—a man with an excellent grasp of Marx’s critique of political economy, such that he literally made the “Red Pope” of the U.S. Socialist movement, Daniel De Leon, look like a utopian socialist rube on the issue of wages and strikes and provided one of the earliest critiques of the perspective that nationalized property was synonymous with socialized property—would not have thought the pitiful line constituted any kind of victory for the working class forces assembled in Dublin that Easter Monday.And, while some would have us believe that Connolly was equally enamored of Pearse and the aging IRB men who led the Irish Volunteer forces in 1916, what is clear from the reports of his actions within the GPO and his exchanges with his troops, is that Connolly, regardless of what titles might have been bestowed on him that day, marched into battle that Easter Monday first and foremost a leader of the Irish Citizen Army and a soldier of the working class, intent on making a class war. Whether this conjecture accurately reflects the perspective of James Connolly cannot be said with certainty, for the simple reason that Connolly’s death before a English firing squad in the wake of the failed Easter Rising deprived us of the only source who might have made the answer plain. What is less subject to guesswork, however, is what the result of the joint action of the ICA and Irish Volunteers in 1916.Drawing upon the example of the wedding of the armed forces of the Irish working class with the traditional ranks of ‘physical force’ Irish nationalism, the subordination of the interests of the Irish working class to the interests of ‘the Irish nation’ (devoid of class distinctions) was successfully advocated. While there were notable instances of working class volunteers within the Irish Republican Army acting as a force in the class war, there were many more instances where the IRA served to defend private property from expropriation during the War of Independence.With Larkin imprisoned in the U.S. for his anti-war propaganda, Connolly dead, and the ICA is disarray, the leadership of Irish socialism fell into the hands of reformists and others who lacked the capacity for dynamic Marxist analysis. The failure of the republican movement to place the interests of Irish workers at the forefront of the national liberation struggle prompted the leaders of Irish labour to either defer to the republican agenda or to pull further into isolation. At the same time, most Irish revolutionaries who might have followed Connolly’s example took a path that led to the republican movement, rather than one that was specifically republican socialist.It is noteworthy that revolutionaries of the caliber of Peadar O Donnell, Frank Ryan, Mick Price and others didn’t join the various Irish communist formations which arose in the 1920s, but the IRA; and while these individuals helped to chart a republican socialist course within the channels of Irish republicanism at times, their efforts were undermined, thwarted, and diluted by the Republican Movement as well. For example, while O Donnell’s Saor Eire party briefly obtained a mandate as a recognized party of the Republican Movement, the movement gave the same mandate to both Sinn Fein, and De Valera’s Fianna Fail at the same time, reflecting not an endorsement of Saor Eire’s socialism, but a policy of trying to be all things to all classes at once.It is notable that a figure like Peadar O Donnell, who is clearly among the best of the Irish socialists of his day, played no role whatsoever in the initial forging of the Irish communist movement. It is likewise notable that while the aforementioned socialist republicans were all among the architects of the Republican Congress of the 1930s, they were only able to participate in the founding of that organization by first resigning from the Army Council of the IRA, which forbade them from participating.It would take until the end of 1974, in fact, for the Irish working class to gain a replacement for the model first represented by the Irish Citizen Army; when Seamus Costello and his like thinkers left the ranks of the Official Republican Movement and forged both a new republican socialist party and, at long last, a specifically republican socialist armed organization in Ireland again—the Irish National Liberation Army.

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